The start of April means we are already a quarter of the way through the year! This week (actually last week, insert embarrassed eye-roll emoji here haha) in our #BookishBloggersUnite posts, we thought it would be fun to have a look back at the year so far. The host for the week was Laura from That Library Lady - make sure you pop over and check out her blog and post for everyone's first quarter check-ins!

So, here are a few highlights from my year so far...
As of the end of March, I'd read 26 books so far this year - 6 in January, 12 in February, and 8 in March. Only one of the books I've read so far was written by a man (The Woman in the Window) - all the others by women! And 10 have been LoveOzYA books.

In terms of challenges, the main one I'm doing this year is the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge. At the end of March I've read books against 8 of the 24 prompts, so I'm a tiny bit ahead. You can follow my progress over on my Read Harder page.

I've also challenged myself to read books that have been long or shortlisted for a couple of awards, including the Stella Prize (I'm halfway through the shortlist) and the ABIA Book of the Year for older children (I've managed to get my hands on 7 of the 8 so far - that's them in the stack there - and of those have read 2 so far).



As well as these I'm keen to read more Australian books in general, especially by indigenous writers - I'm planning to do this by reading against the prompts for the Aussies Rule Reading Challenge, over on Doddy about Books - this needs more attention, as I've hardly read any so far.


I mentioned above I've read 10 LoveOzYA books so far (and another one since then) - I'm pretty pleased with this, and have loads more in my TBR pile.

I was planning on choosing a couple of favourite books so far, but it is so HARD! haha! There are 4 books I have given either 4.5 or 5 stars to so far though (some of these I've raved about already):

• Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda - Becky Albertali
• If I Tell You - Alicia Tuckerman
• Draekora - Lynetter Noni
• Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

I also have 2 favourite bookish things I've done or been doing so far, the first being my new habit of going to read at a cafe with a croissant and coffee before work about once a week (you might have seen on me going on about this on my Instagram feed if you follow me over there), and the other was the preview screening of Love, Simon. It was such a wonderful weekend, first reading the book pretty much in one sitting on the Saturday and then the movie with a friend on Sunday - so lovely!
April is going to be a big month for bookish events and I am SO EXCITED!